In demand: Lord Justice Chadwick who has been asked by the Government to resolve the Equitable Life dispute

Optimism is in short supply among the one million victims of the long-running Equitable Life scandal. So when a renowned retired judge was appointed by the Government to find a way to deliver compensation to those hardest hit by the insurer's near-meltdown in the late Nineties, the move was greeted with universal cynicism.

Now the critics appear to have been proved right. Four months after Sir John Chadwick was asked to look at the issue, he appears to have spent more time delivering justice in Dubai and the Caribbean than on probing into how financial recompense can finally be made to Equitable Life investors in the UK.

At Equitable's annual meeting last Monday, it emerged that 68-year-old Chadwick, a distinguished former Lord Justice of Appeal, had had only minimal contact with the mutual's directors - a one-hour meeting - to discuss how best to conduct his work.

It prompted swift accusations from policyholder pressure groups that
there appears to be no urgency in resolving the matter, which is
playing into the hands of a Government that has made it plain it would
rather kick the Equitable Life issue into the long grass than dip into
the much-stretched public purse.

Among those most angered by Chadwick's lack of progress is Paul
Braithwaite of Equitable Life pressure group Emag. Over the past nine
years, the Equitable Members' Action Group, together with
Parliamentary-Ombudsman Ann Abraham, has led the battle for
compensation on behalf of policyholders whose investments were left in
tatters as a result of mismanagement by the mutual and the regulator's
failure to spot it until it was far too late.

Braithwaite said: 'Earlier this month, we had Harriet Harman stand
up in the House of Commons and state that Chadwick was proceeding as
quickly as possible when she knew full well that he has four other jobs
and is far from retired.

'All that will be forthcoming before the House breaks up for the
summer recess is an outline approach from Chadwick. It's an outrage,
given that 30,000 Equitable Life victims have already died waiting for
financial justice and thousands more will die before any ex gratia
payments result from Chadwick's work.'

Braithwaite believes compensation is years - rather than months - away.

Chadwick's other jobs are both time-consuming and distracting,
taking him around the globe. Although he is officially based at One
Essex Court, a leading set of London-based barristers' chambers
specialising in commercial litigation, where he is an arbitrator,
Chadwick is president of the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal, a position
he took up in December.

Only last month Chadwick, who lists sailing as his recreation in
Who's Who, presided over the two-week spring session of the court in
this Caribbean idyll, a British overseas territory. This included an
unsuccessful appeal made by three Americans against convictions for
possessing cocaine, weighing ten pounds, with intent to supply and the
dismissal of an appeal made against a 2007 conviction for a double
murder.

Early last year, he was also appointed a judge at the Dubai
International Financial Centre Courts with Dr Omar Bin Sulaiman,
governor of the DIFC, welcoming him as one of six new 'highly
distinguished judges'.

Tough: Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham

In February and March, he handed down judgments in a long-running
dispute between Arabtec Construction and Ultra Fuji International and
the DIFC has already said Chadwick will be available 'all week' in the
middle of August.

Closer to home, Chadwick is also a Lieutenant Bailiff of the Royal
Court of Guernsey. Last week, he was unavailable for comment, ill at
the home in East Meon, Hampshire, he shares with his wife Diana. Simon
Bor, who is assisting him over Equitable, refused to answer questions.

The Treasury merely confirmed that it was expecting the first of
Chadwick's interim reports on Equitable Life before the summer recess
at the end of July. It refused to put a timetable on when a payment
system would finally be put in place other than 'as soon as possible'.

Yet for all the lack of progress, cries for a swift end to the
Equitable Life scandal will not dissipate. Certainly, the ferocious
Abraham will not go away. Last year, she called for an 'independent,
transparent and speedy compensation scheme' to be set up to restore
investors' losses resulting from regulatory maladministration. But the
Government rejected her recommendation, instead turning to Chadwick.

Abraham this month raised further concerns over the fact that there
was no timetable for the conclusion of Chadwick's work as well as
querying whether the Government had the right to dismiss summarily her
recommendation.

She said: 'Whatever the outcome of the work that Sir John Chadwick
will undertake, it is clear that the injustice I have found to have
resulted from maladministration will not be remedied.'

Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable has tabled an early day motion
calling for compensation, a move gathering cross-party support. Gordon
Brown was asked at Prime Minister's Questions last Wednesday about the
failure to provide compensation. His one-sentence response was that a
judge was looking into it.

This week, Chadwick is on home soil, although whether he will be
able to attend tomorrow's first performance of Handel's Messiah at the
Temple Church in the City by the Temple Singers depends on his recovery
from illness. Chadwick is a supporter of the Temple Singers as well as
a trustee of the Temple Music Trust.

Equitable Life campaigners will just be hoping his health improves
quickly enough to devote a little more time to getting them long
overdue financial justice - before the health of many more of them goes
into terminal decline.